


everything seemed charcoal

by Vita_S_West



Category: Inspector Morse & Related Fandoms, Lewis (TV)
Genre: Complete, Fluff, M/M, Picnics, art class, art museum visits, idiots to lovers, the mortifying ordeal of drawing your crush while pretending you aren't horny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:55:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25540951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vita_S_West/pseuds/Vita_S_West
Summary: Robbie signs up for an art class and drags James along on several assignments. Before long, he finds more than he bargained for. "Art can be a dangerous thing," Robbie's art teacher told him. If only he knew what she meant...
Relationships: James Hathaway/Robert Lewis
Comments: 16
Kudos: 146





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> this started by chatting with greenapricot and quickly became unamanageable like a crowded garden after heavy rain—but nonetheless full of charm and happiness—so thanks to you

When Robert Lewis’s daughter gave him a beautiful sketchpad filled with thick, creamy paper, a box of watercolour pencils, and another of sketching pencils, all packed in glossy boxes with crinkly paper as a birthday gift, his first thought was _Oh, no, this stuff’s too nice._ While he’d always enjoyed drawing and doodling, he felt his rudimentary skill was unworthy of the elegant materials. He resigned himself to practice and shut them in a drawer for safekeeping. Naturally, he all but forgot about them, until months later, in early January, Lyn asked him how he was getting on with his drawing supplies. A twinge of guilt shot him right through his heart and he had to admit that he hadn’t opened them up yet.

“Oh,” was her soft, disappointed reply, summoning an even more powerful twinge of guilt.

“But that’s only because I haven’t had me lessons yet,” he added hastily, without thinking.

“Oh, you’ve signed up for lessons?” Lyn’s voice brightened instantly.

“Yes, for this winter.” Robbie grimaced and silently cursed himself, as he cradled the phone with his shoulders, making a note on a sheet of paper, _Sign up for drawing lessons, MAN!!_

Naturally, the other side of that paper had notes for a case and the next day he unthinkingly handed it to James Hathaway.

“I wasn’t aware there was such a debilitating shortage of police sketch artists,” Hathaway deadpanned. “Or is this another part of the promotions to DI?”

“What?” Robbie had asked, bewildered before he glanced over at what James was holding. “Oh, bugger. It’s—I have to take an art class.”

“Why?”

“I’ve told Lyn, I will.”

“Why did you do that?”

“She got me drawing supplies, but they were too nice to use, so I told her I was taking lessons to get better first.”

“That seems like a lot of intermediary steps,” said James, “to use a pad of paper.”

Robbie happened to agree with him, but had no intention of backing down.

That was how he ended up in the stuffy upstairs of a community centre, listening to the dreamy poetics of Sue Nafisi-Davis tell him he’d been holding a pencil wrong all his life. According to her, we should have been holding it with fewer fingers, with a lighter, more dexterous grip and held his hand further from the paper, so he could see what he was drawing. She wasn’t telling him, Robert Lewis, specifically, that he was an amateur, but rather, she addressed the class, explaining that they’d been pressing down too hard on the paper.

“The best artists never need erasures,” she explained. “With confidence you can turn your worst mistakes into your greatest opportunities. When you draw, you should be drawing lightly and then layering on the lines. You build it up slowly!”

She showed slides of Kazimir Malevich paintings, one of which was a red square floating on a white background and Piet Mondrian’s cubist tableaus, some orderly and linear, and others crowded, textured grids. Robbie had barely heard of Cubism, let alone the specifics of Analytic or Synthetic Cubism. He didn’t know it was humanly possible to draw so many lines in one sitting, but he did. And then he drew about another two dozen after that.

Robbie spent the entire first lesson drawing lines and squares, feeling utterly infantalized.

He hadn’t been planning on saying anything to the instructor, but on his way out, she’d fixed him with an airy sort of smile and he found himself pausing.

“It’s a bit slow going, only drawing lines and all,” he said. Then he cringed somewhat. He didn’t mean to sound ungrateful or rude and she was the teacher after all, it was just that it wasn’t what he expected.

Sue smiled her smile and said, “You have to learn the techniques so that you can handle the more complicated elements. Think of it as the foundation. You can’t get to the attic without a basement!”

“Right,” Robbie was already regretting the conversation. He shouldn’t have been rude.

“It’s Robert, right? What do you do, Robert?”

“Well, I’m a policeman.”

Sue nodded eagerly. “See, you already understand! You have to learn the basic techniques before you get to the dangerous stuff. You wouldn’t just hand someone a gun their first week in the police academy!”

Robbie was startled. “Well, no that would be dangerous. But art isn’t a gun.”

“You’re quite right. Some would say that art is more dangerous than a gun.”

“In my line of work, ma’am, I’m not sure that you would…”

“Guns do one thing, Robert. They fire bullets. Those bullets maim you or they kill you. Art can do much _more_. Inspire a much wider range of actions and emotions. You might not think of art as a weapon in the literal sense, but it has been used for good and evil alike. Art makes _something_ happen in a way that makes _nothing_ happen.”

Robbie felt inclined to disagree before he was suddenly in a conversation about wartime propaganda and he had to plead ignorance. And being late to meet a friend.

“We’ll do more next class, Robert. But don’t forget to practice. Then you can try getting dangerous!” she said with a cheery wave.

When Hathaway asked him how he found his lessons, Robbie had to admit, “I don’t rightly know…”

Hathaway regarded him skeptically. “Didn’t you go?”

“Yes, of course. It just… wasn’t what I thought it would be.”

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It means you’re learning things.”

Robbie nodded. “Yes, I suppose you’re right…”

“We’ll make a Monet out of you yet.”

He snorted. “Not for a while, lad. We don’t get to painting until much later.”

***

Robbie decided to give it another class. He’d only done the one and it would get better—now that he knew how to hold a pencil.

The next class, they spent a maddening amount of time staring at Lyonel Feininger’s _Cathedral of the Future_ , a woodcut full of angular and triangular lines and edges, and talking about form. Sue spent half the lesson discussing different types of shading—smooth, cross hatching, slinky, and stippling. Robbie had never heard of Karl Ioganson’s _Study in Balance_ , Matisse’s _Notre-Dame, une fin d'après-midi_ , or Chiaroscuro before, but he spent rather a lot more time than he knew was possible looking at them and listening to Sue talk about them passionately. 

“Chiaroscuro isn’t just important to _modern_ art. It’s an old skill as necessary to art as the wheel is to civilization. It’s what makes Rembrandt and Carravaggio _so_ memorable!” she recounted to them. It was at this point in the class that they were allowed to sketch wooden blocks lit under desk lamps to practice lines and shading. She continued to lecture and Robbie started to draw. He found himself tuning out the specifics of her speech, instead letting its cadence wash over him like rain on a roof. He had no idea what she was saying half the time anyways.

“We’re talking about adding weight or dimension to our work,” she said with a voice that never quite touched the ground. “You have to make your lines darker by layering light ones on top of each other. This keeps it smooth. Think of the fluidity of your motions like the waves on a shore. Like a pendulum. Like hypnotism. Repetitive and calming. You build it up _slowly_.”

***

“I have no idea what she’s saying half the time!” Robbie groaned to James, as they shared a drink. Robbie had let out a beleaguered sigh and James had asked what was on his mind, unaware it was an invitation for a poorly-repressed tirade. “She strings words together like they mean something but they don’t! And the art! It makes less sense than her. We might be talking about two point perspectives and charcoal, but I have no idea what we’re looking at! It’s all Cubist and Expressionism and Tachisme.”

James took in most of this speech with some amusement before frowning. “Who is this woman?”

“Bully if I know.”

“What’s her name?” He pulled out his phone.

“Sue Nafisi-Davis.”

After a moment of typing, James whistled. 

“What?” Robbie asked leaning over.

“She’s something of an artist herself.”

“What?” He took James’s phone and began scrolling through her bio, touting an education in Modernist Art, several awards and exhibits at notable galleries. “What’s she doing teaching my art class?”

“Maybe art’s like poetry. You might be famous for it, but you still need a day job.”

“I s’pose so,” Robbie murmured.

“She must know what she’s doing at least,” James said, “no matter her, ahem, artist flourishes.”

“Oh, stop that,” Robbie said, but he was already smiling and then laughing in spite of himself. “I can always count on you…”

“To what?”

“Oh, you know,” Robbie said with another smile. “Another?” He picked up their glasses with a raised eyebrow.

“Why not?” James grinned back, cheeks pink—from the drink, no doubt.

***

“Think of space as the breath your piece needs to take,” Sue told the class. “Think of space not just in your piece, but the breathing and contemplation of your audience. Are you trying to overwhelm them? Excite them? Relax them? Entreat them? Space in your drawing can be static or dynamic. It can be poetic enjambment, a pause you didn’t think you would have to take. It can be a break, to gather your bearings.”

Staring at his lesson schedule, Robbie could see that it was another two bleeding weeks until “Colours” and then another month after that until Still-Life, Portraiture and Landscapes. He began to think that he didn’t want to do proper art or drawing, that all he wanted to do was doodle in his notes and papers next to his phone. No matter what James had said. Lyn didn’t care how he treated or mistreated the sketchpad, so long as he was using it. Yes, he decided, he was done with the art classes.

Flipping through their case notes, the next afternoon, Hathaway paused at something. 

He said, with some surprise. “Did you draw this?”

He was looking at one of Robbie’s practice sketches, a mind numbing study of lines, shading, charcoal and one point perspective.

“Oh, leave it off,” Robbie said tightly without thinking.

“What?” Hathaway looked utterly startled.

“I can do without your mocking.”

“I wasn’t going to mock you,” Hathaway protested. He looked perplexed and rubbed at the smears of charcoal covering his fingers.

Robbie huffed, but James insisted.

“I was surprised, that’s all. It’s a little more abstract than you usually go for, but you’ve got the technique there, and I—well, I rather think it’s good. You’ve definitely improved.” 

As suddenly as Hathaway had opened his mouth he stuck it and turned back to his case notes, with a studious eye. He only raised his eyes briefly to wipe the charcoal stains from his fingers.

Flushing lightly, marvelling at the unexpected compliment, Robbie thanked him, and decided, maybe he could keep going to the art classes after all.

***

It was James’s pleasant encouragement that allowed Robbie to broach what would have otherwise been embarrassing. “I have an assignment for my art class. I have to go to a museum and make a sketch about something that moves me.”

“Like a car?” James asked, his lips quirked upwards.

“Forget it,” Robbie muttered.

“No, wait, I’m sorry. I was just taking the piss. What museum? What's the assignment?”

“I was just going to see if you wanted to join,” Robbie said with a shrug. How could it be that Hathaway could look so nonplussed all the time? Could he emulate it?

“After the case?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Sounds good.” He nodded, maddeningly calm.

***

“I just…” Robbie said, his voice tighter than his shoulders, “don’t _get_ it.”

“I’m not sure it wants to be understood,” James said, his head tilted slightly, his brow thoroughly knit.

Modern Art Oxford presented hall after hall of contemporary and modern art exhibits. They didn’t inspire Robbie, so much as confuse him. James and Robbie stood before a canvass that started as a kaleidoscope of greens and blues, in a frame, before descending to the ground, fraying and dissolving into tatters, with a single thread leading the gaze up to a blown glass… _blob_ on a pedestal a few feet away.

“I just can’t believe they’re all like this.”

“I’d say none of them are _really_ alike,” James said sardonically.

“You know what I mean. They’re all,” he paused to wave his hand wildly at it, “indecipherable. Creative and imaginative and all that, but how am I supposed to be _moved_?”

“Let’s go back to that mixed-media room with the short videos and the mirrors,” James said. 

“I guess that will have to do,” Robbie said, “I can say it moved me when it suddenly played thunder that scared the hell out of us.”

“I was going to say that one because it has benches we can sit on while you draw, but I suppose you can say it _moved_ you when you jumped a foot in the air.” James smiled.

They sat across from one of the projected screens. Robbie hunched up over his sketch pad, while James stretched his legs out, ankles crossed. His hands rested behind him, fingers curled around the edge of the bench. They stayed like that for several minutes, Robbie trying to draw a pattern of refracted images with laser focus, while James stared idly around the high-ceilinged and airy room. Suddenly, he got up and strode over to examine one of the plaques, leaving his jacket discarded on the bench.

It wasn’t Robbie’s frustration with his task at hand that allowed his eyes to follow James easily. It was the fluidity of James’s movement. The ease of his long-legged gate. A poise to his shoulders. He slowed to a stop, head tilted toward the plaque. His arms were crossed and his feet were shoulder-width apart. 

With a smile, Robbie flipped his paper over and quickly memorialized the sight before James turned and strode to the next plaque, his arms swinging, his sleeves rolled up. The gallery light cast a glint off his watch. Robbie smiled to himself as he followed the motions with his eyes and his pencil.

At the second plaque James read with his hands on his hips, before reaching up to rub the back of his neck. It remained there as if he’d forgotten to take it down. Robbie studied the lines and curves of those fingers, remembering how they looked when they wrote notes as both sat at their desks. He remembered how James would push them through his hair when he was tired at the end of the day. Lovely, fingers really. Abruptly, James’s posture straightened and he turned to glance back at Robbie, who froze, suddenly feeling like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have.

James walked over to him slowly and Robbie quickly flipped the page over.

“All done?” James asked, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah, I reckon so,” Robbie said, wishing he could erase his embarrassment off his cheeks like he would a misplaced pencil strike.

“Time for the pub?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

***

The assignment was barely done and badly done at that. Robbie stapled the write-up of _how_ it moved him to the back, a full 200 words too short, but he couldn’t think of anything else to put. 

When Sue handed it back to him after class, she told him it was passable, but not up to his full potential.

“I just had trouble with it, all those pieces and the tapestries and the videos and all. I’m not used to it.” 

She smiled at him, took the assignment back and flipped it over. “I’m not sure the lack of quality lies in the material, so much as your disinterest in it. In this, however,” she said, showing him the back of his assignment. “I can see an attentiveness and care that wasn’t in the assignment. I would go so far as to call it intimacy, in the curve his fingers and the way you capture the wrinkles of his shirt. Who is he to you?”

The words _intimacy_ and the specificity of _to you_ —as if James Hathaway were many things, but something very particular and special to Robbie—jolted him and then coloured his cheeks worse than if Matisse himself were to do the honours. “Just my partner,” he mumbled.

Her eyes lit up and Robbie instantly realized his mistake. “No, no, not like that. My work partner. We work together.”

The way she looked at him gave him the sinking feeling that she didn’t believe him. “But there’s trust in your relationship, vulnerability.”

“Well, yes, I suppose so.”

“You trust him when you’re in tight places.”

“Sure.”

“Maybe even with your life.”

The answer to that question was unquestionably yes, but the quirk to her eyebrow made his mouth feel all woolly. He sort of shrugged, then nodded, and though he had tried to moderate his response, it made it all the louder, and all the clearer.


	2. Part 2

The seeming absurdity of Sue’s words about James made Robbie want to repeat them. He wanted to spin the anecdote into another bewildering story to illustrate the wackiness of Sue and his classes. The first audience to come to his mind was James and the second he thought of telling him, his stomach plummeted.

No, he couldn’t tell him. Sue was being silly after all, just overanalyzing things like she did in class. Just wacky silliness. He didn’t need to mention it to James.

Like most of what Sue said, he put it aside and decided not to think about it.

***

Robbie slowly acclimatized to the shape of the classes and the dreamy air of Sue, who seemed to talk through compulsion rather than an intended design. He stared at Matisse and Henri-Edmond Cross paintings and Aleksandr Rodchenko’s _Pure Red Color_ , _Pure Yellow Color_ and _Pure Blue Color._ He listened to Sue talk about the composition and construction of colours, grisaille (the monochromatic painting technique exclusively in shades of grey), the construction of planes and, of course, building up slowly. In creating his three monochromatic paintings, Rodchenko had claimed he’d “reduced painting to its logical conclusion” and that it was “all over”.

“With his three canvasses, he said, ‘I affirmed: it's all over. Basic colours. Every plane is a plane and there is to be no representation.’ They were nicknamed ‘the last picture,’” Sue explained. “Imagine creating a piece and asserting that there was no more art to make. These three paintings represent a fundamental aspect of modernist art—to pursue a formal investigation to its logical end. It’s about an end, but also a beginning. I say that singularly because there are many ends and many beginnings. Rodchenko wasn’t saying this is it, no more art. He was announcing the death of old forms to usher in the birth of new forms. How can we use colours to invoke loss and ending and resolution, but also beginning and dawning and inception?” Then with a dreamy sigh and a skyward tilt to her eyes, she said, “It sounds so apocalyptic, hm?”

Robbie wasn’t even annoyed listening to her anymore. He had no idea what the next thing out of her mouth would be, but unlike with work, there weren’t any real consequences to her speeches. She could say things and they could wash over him, occasionally perforating, but mostly bouncing off. Art was safe that way.

The following week, when discussing portraiture, Sue told them about the Paris School and the German School. Robbie was clearly well acclimatized by then, however, because he was not stressed when the projector showed the _Weeping Woman_ (1937) by Pablo Picasso—a grotesque collage of a face—and _Seated Woman_ (1944) by Willem de Kooning—a yellow, wide-eyed and mask-like face. He merely took care to note and curate the details for James’s amusement, like little gems, though he knew the actual treat was the smiles and invariably James’s laughter.

“The flattened style of Picasso's early analytical Cubism is characterized by the use of angular and overlapping fragments of the subject's face, as if it were painted from different viewpoints simultaneously. There is _no_ depth in this piece, it uses a linear perspective,” Sue told them, “but it _is_ multidimensional! It depicts Henriette Theodora Markovitch, Picasso’s mistress of six years. He painted her repeatedly over the years. This was a long and intimate relationship, one that his art reflects. When _you_ draw someone, take into account not just who they are and what you see, but beyond that! The length of your relationship, your intimacy and your shared chronology, your love. Love is best felt! Feel it and put it in your portraiture!”

***

After her speech, there was no way Robbie could ask James to sit for the portrait. Her forgotten words about intimacy wrapped their arms around her words about love and portraiture and fused. They settled into him like a stain that no scrubbing could fade. He couldn't ask James.

But he still needed someone. He couldn’t very well go to a café and draw a stranger. There would be much too much staring. 

_Who is he to you? Your shared chronology._

He settled on Laura after nearly a week of deliberation and stress. She had a good laugh at the prospect. 

“Sit for you?” She asked. “What, nude, like one of your French girls?”

Robbie sputtered, “My w-what? Nude? My god, woman, clothed!”

“Relax, Robbie, I’m teasing. I’m sure if you wanted it nude you would ask the dishy Sergeant Hathaway.”

He lost the ability to speak. His throat tightened, his mouth went dry and he felt his face burn. _How_ could she know? 

“Robbie, it was just a joke.”

Of course. She didn’t. Know? There was nothing to know! He tried to nod, but had to suffer, unbidden, the entering of an image into his head—of James, _portraying intimacy_ —

“I’m fine.” He was lying. _—light catching chest hair—_ He was going to die, he was sure. “It’s just not something I, er—” _—soft, angular flesh–_ “—think of when I think of art, you know.”

“I suppose someone so good-looking is the _art_ themselves,” Laura mused, as she eyed him with a wicked glint in her eye.

Robbie opened and closed his mouth several times, but no sound came out.

 _Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t_ even _think about it. —hair trailing down his stomach, past angular hips, to his—_

“All right, Robbie?” Laura regarded him the way a cat would a mouse.

Robbie nodded and turned promptly on his heel, unable to utter a sound, heart pounding in his ears.

In the bathroom, he put cold water on his face and thoroughly cursed Laura. Then himself. Then Sue. Then Laura once more for good measure. Then he texted her to explain, in no uncertain terms, that he wanted her to sit, _fully-clothed_ , for maybe an hour after work or during their lunch break.

He hadn’t even made it back to his desk when he got a reply.

Laura: _Oh, I don’t think I’ll have the time, after all :( I guess you’ll have to ask James :)_

He cursed her again, thumping his head on his desk.

“All right, sir?” Hathaway called from his own desk, eyebrows raised.

“Hm? Oh, yes. Never better,” he said in a half-strangled voice of misery.

***

Robbie put off asking James for several more days. After Sue’s speech and then Laura… It was the stain. Just a wacky, silly stain. He just had to let it fade a bit and then things would go back to normal.

Maybe he could just flunk the assignment. He didn’t need to be good at portraits.

But he didn’t want that. He wanted to do well in the course and do better at drawing. No matter what Sue had said or thought— _in_ _timacy, shared chronology, love_ —or Laura thought or insinuated, it made sense to ask James. Sue had already complimented Robbie’s drawing of him and James had been supportive of his lessons so far. He had to grit his teeth and bear it. And possibly never speak to Laura again. 

_Your intimacy and your shared chronology, your love._ _Love is best felt. Dishy sergeant, that good-looking._

And probably never speak to Sue either.

He would be a bloody good portraitist though.

There were so many opportunities to ask James, as they sat discussing cases, laughing and talking at the pub after work, and even sharing a meal—but he couldn’t. Each time, Robbie saw the pause in idle conversation, saw it present itself to him deliberately like fruit on a vine, and each time he licked his lips and opened his mouth to ask. But he couldn’t form the words. The tension was too much. James would catch the pause in the conversation though. He would tilt his head and look at Robbie questioning and each time Robbie told himself that he was mad. That James wouldn’t like it.

Even though he knew, James had no idea what Sue or Laura had said, which was for the best. Besides, both women were very clearly wrong and had merely got the wrong end of the stick. It was art. _Just_ art.

Eventually, the eleventh hour struck threateningly and Robbie had to act. The assignment was due the next evening and Robbie knew he would need time to fix the sketch after. He just had to ask.

James had poured the last dregs of his drink down and set it down on the bar’s table with a satisfying _clunk_ and reached for his jacket. 

“Could I—” Robbie began too loudly.

James had been in the middle of standing up and stopped. “Yes?”

“Could I draw you?”

“What?”

“For my class, could I—We’re doing portraits and I need a subject.”

“A subject? Like a lab rat?”

“No,” Robbie smiled in spite of himself. “Like a model.”

“Ah.”

“Could you do it? Please, the teacher liked the other one I did of you,”

“The _other_ one you did of me?” James said, his face changing from bemusement to surprise.

Robbie could have kicked himself. “Yes, I, er, when we went to the museum, I included you in the assignment. She said it was rather good.”

“Can you show me?”

“Of course. Can I draw you?”

James nodded and started to stand again, yawning. “Let me know when.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Robbie admitted. “Can it be tonight?”

“What?”

“It’s due tomorrow. Can I draw you tonight? I would have asked sooner, but we were busy with the case,” Robbie lied as if these thoughts hadn’t been chasing him around for weeks. 

James started, before he slowly nodded. “Alright. It had better be at your place.”

It was a surprisingly short time before James, yawning occasionally, was on a stool in good light provided by the kitchen and a lamp moved from the bedroom to sit.

At the counter, Robbie stared, his eyes pinched, fingers pulling at his chin. He intermittently traced lines on the page, as lines around his eyes grew more pronounced. James stifled a smile rather than another yawn.

“Am I so displeasing?”

“No. Why would you say that?”

“You're staring at me so intently. I thought you must not like what you see.”

“Of course not. Why would you say that?” Robbie said, genuinely startled. His eyes tracing James’s eyelashes, the bridge of his nose and the pink of his lips. “Why wouldn’t anyone like what they see?” Robbie muttered, recalling Laura’s _dishy_ comment. 

He realized what he’d said and stared downward into his paper in abject horror. “I mean, surely you realize, lad, that you’re rightly beaut—er, good-looking. Er.” He’d said too much. Was saying good-looking better or worse? He shouldn't have said anything at all. He wished a hole would open up to swallow him. The tension moved to his fingers and he began to draw. “It’s this art class. It’s all beauty this and social and moral upheaval that and Matisse and Picasso and building up slowly. I was staring at the vending machine’s shadow the other day. I thought it had a nice texture to it.”

“Was it good-looking too?” James had an unnatural lightness to his voice. Robbie couldn’t bring himself to look him in the eye. Instead, he examined his chin, his ears, the softness of his cheeks that were beginning to be pierced with stubble. He kept drawing, his fingers occasionally blurring lines.

“Mm, no. It had a stoutness to it that I respected. A utilitarianism. Like me.”

“I think you do have it, too,” James said quietly. 

"Beauty?"

"Yes."

Robbie froze, his pencil hovering above the page. “That’s very nice of you,” he said in a small voice. “But when you look like you do, lad…” he stopped himself. He had no idea what he was saying. Or he knew exactly what he was saying and that was worse. It was the beer. He’d drunk too much. No. This was all Laura’s fault. “Almost done,” he said a little too loudly, even though he wasn’t. He still hadn’t looked at James’s eyes. 

He couldn’t look him in the eye.

“Can I see?” James asked, his voice husky.

Slowly, Robbie made himself look up. He pried his eyes from the page, pushed them across the floor, up James’s feet, resting on the stool’s spokes, up his legs, past his lightly-crossed arms, the darkened hollow of his neck, shadowed by his shirt collar. James stared at him intently. A piercing gaze that demanded a returning look. Maybe it just demanded. It was a look that sent Robbie’s teeth into his bottom lip.

“Sure,” he said even though it was a rough sketch and thoroughly incomplete.  
“It’s nice,” James said after a moment, his head tilted. He looked as if he were trying very hard to figure something out. “I look…”

“Not bad!” Robbie insisted, startled. 

“No. Not bad. Good even. Just a little severe. You haven’t got my eyes.”

“I’ll do them after.”

“You can do them now.”

“It’s okay,” Robbie said hastily. “You’re tired. You keep yawning. You should head home for some rest.”

“Are you sure?” James asked, hesitantly, slowly drawing to his feet.

“Of course. I know what your eyes look like!” Robbie said with a slight eye roll as if the idea of his forgetting were silly. As if the entire exercise were silly.

And he did remember what James’s eyes looked like, their shape, their colour, the way they burned into him as he pulled on his coat and glanced at Robbie before closing the door. A look that demanded.


	3. Part 3

They mostly pretended that the portrait didn’t happen. After James left, Robbie tossed and turned in his bed, replaying the words and looks they’d exchanged, cursing himself for making a bloody fool of himself. What must James think of him. He shuddered to think. 

When Robbie next entered the office, he wasn’t sure what to expect. The first part of the morning was awkward. Neither talked first and then they interrupted each other continually, flushing. Finally, eventually, James asked how the portrait turned out and Robbie told him it was fine—and it was. Better than fine, in fact. He was quite pleased with it really.

Robbie waited for James to say something about how utterly bizarre he had behaved. He didn’t. Neither mentioned it as they went about their day.

Eventually, nearing the end of the day, after they’d managed to start making eye contact when talking, Innocent asked, “What’s gotten into you two?”

In a moment of shock, their eyes found each other and they both sputtered out a rejection to her insinuation.

“Nothing, ma’am.”

“Not sure what you mean, ma’am,” they said at once.

She eyed them skeptically but left them alone. They exchanged looks and laughed, wordlessly agreeing that she not only had the wrong end of the stick, but she had an entirely wrong stick as well.

They slipped back into themselves, their friendliness and familiarity recouped as they returned to work. Enjoying watching James smile, Robbie felt relieved that things were back to normal. He thought of it as geniality, only vaguely aware, that others might call it intimacy.

***

As spring approached so did the end of the drawing lessons. The final assignments coincided uniquely with a busier work schedule than usual, one brought on by unexpected injuries, early retirements, and ill-scheduled vacations—none of which were Lewis’s or Hathaway’s, but affected them nonetheless. Robbie just couldn’t find the time to do the final assignment.

“Just turn in any of your old stuff and change the date on it,” James told him, when he caught him stressing once again, shirtsleeves rolled up, hands and wrists stained with pencil and charcoal, as he scowled at scribbled-over images. Everything seemed to be fuming, inadequacy and black smudges. “Any of this stuff will do. She won’t be able to tell the difference and it’s not like—” Here James had faltered. 

Robbie suspected he’d been about to suggest it didn’t really matter, but that was the problem. Nothing James said hadn’t already occurred to him. All of this had visited him in the night, while he tossed about in bed, cursing his caseload, his many absent colleagues whose cases were now his, and the fact that this was undoubtedly an inconsequential art class. But James had stopped himself when he came to the realization that Robbie had already had. It really _did_ matter. It was just some silly art class in a community centre, but as the months had advanced it had come to mean so much more. It had built up slowly. 

“You’ve come a long way,” James said instead, his voice soft and his eyes gentle. It was true, Robbie knew it.

“I want to do a good job. I know I can do better.”

“You can. You will,” James said. “When do you need it finished?”

“Next Tuesday,” Robbie said, heaving an immense sigh. His shoulders ached and he realized he was tensing them. It was Wednesday and they were up to their ears in work.

“We have time. What’s the assignment this time? Another field trip?”

“She suggested something like that. It has to be either a still life, a landscape, or portrait, but it has to contain elements we learned in the course, you know, perspective, colour, space, shading and all that.”

“Not too bad, you’re already doing all that.”

“She has this other piece for the assignment. It has let the past and the present intermingle like lovers. She said to try and create art about _being both_.”

“Well, naturally, what else would the past and present do?”

“I wasn’t stressed by modernists before this,” Robbie said, rubbing his chest. He left a charcoal smear across his white shirt and groaned loudly.

Robbie hadn’t told him that he’d already asked Sue for pointers or suggestions. _“I just don’t know where to start,” he had confessed miserably to her._

 _“Start somewhere that makes you happiest. You’re tripping over yourself, blocking yourself. To free yourself you need to step outside of yourself, step aside and look down—or up!” she had added. “Start with something that makes you happy and use it like a rope to pull yourself along and step_ out _of yourself. Then you’ll be able to see it clear.”_

James’s hand landed on his shoulders, pulling him from himself before he could even recede. “We can go to the river this weekend. You draw the bloody river with punters all on their cellphones or _something_. We have time.”

James’s firmness and confidence pulled a smile from him, and a warmth spread from James’s hand and into his chest.

Robbie nodded. “Aye, we have time.”

 _We._ Neither commented that it was Robbie’s project. James merely slipped responsibility onto himself easily and warmly. It was still all his work, but it was easier to carry.

***

On Friday afternoon, a lucky break in their case created paperwork that filled their schedule into the evening, but most of it they were able to leave off until the following Monday—with Innocent’s permission of course. It left their weekend, mercifully clear. Saturday rain kept them inside, but for Robbie it was a reprieve used to catch up on dishes, laundry and cooking.

Sunday was gloriously sunny and they agreed to set out for an afternoon romp by the river. Robbie brought his sketching material, with extra paper, a blanket, and a few sandwiches. James Hathaway’s opinion of what made a picnic was quite different, however. He arrived in his t-shirt and sunglasses, carrying a bottle of red in one hand and a bag filled with cheese and baguette, along with a second bottle of wine, in the other.

“I figured we were making an afternoon of it,” he said with a shrug, when he caught Robbie’s raised eyebrows.

“We may be,” Robbie said grimly.

“Chin up. Art is calling your name.”

Robbie groaned even as James chuckled.

They found an out of the way spot in an area where they could watch punters drift by in front of them and joggers and dog walkers wander behind them. They spread out across the blanket half under the shade of an alder, unpacked the food, and cracked open the wine, chatting and laughing. They could watch the entire world surge around them, like a river surging around a rock. 

Once they were settled, Robbie got started, meditating on the duality of the past and present. Of being both. At least, he tried to. He turned his attention, brow wrinkled to examine his surroundings and James let himself be ignored, turning his attention to his book. 

The first thing that came to mind was Philip and Nell and their clouds. Looking up, the clouds drifted and he found he couldn’t get them right, their shifts and turns in the wind. He remembered how talented Philip was and how they had stumped even him.

James stretched out, his feet finding the green grass, extending beyond the contours of the blanket. He let out a contented sigh, settling in for the long haul.

As the afternoon slipped around them, Robbie drew several sketches, none of which satisfied him. As suddenly as he’d forgotten James, he remembered him. He was probably out of his mind with boredom. Robbie turned to offer an apology, but James wouldn’t have heard him even if he’d made one. His eyes were shut, as if they were sealed by the soft line of his eyelashes. His long legs stretched off the blanket with his ankles resting in the grass. One hand lay on his lean stomach, rising and falling with each gentle breath, while the other rested behind his head. He looked like a cat, stretched out, half in the sun, half in the shade, dozing softly as if he hadn’t a care in the world. 

It was an oddly comforting sight. When was the last time the lad had looked so content? He was too hard on himself by half.

Robbie smiled to himself, wondering how much wine they’d drank, but not nearly arsed enough to check.

Watching James, Robbie noticed the details. The long firm lines of his legs, the angular lines of his arms, bent at the elbow. The softer lines of his fingers on his stomach and of his eyelashes. The smooth rise and fall of his stomach. The shade from the tree drifted across his face, giving way to a gradual dapple of sunlight across the lean chest and sunbathing across his stomach, hips and legs. The colour of his hair, nearly golden, the blue of his jeans, the grey of his t-shirt. The space of the wide sky above, an impossible blue, and the movement of the river behind him.

Robbie set to work.

The first sketch was crap, but that didn’t stop him. He stuck it under one of the wine bottles and got back to work.

He built up slowly and it came so easy that by the third sketch, he had roughly what he wanted. It came so easy and he worked so hard it wasn’t until he was holding it aloft, comparing the original to the likeness, that he heard Sue’s recommendations echo into his head. _Something that makes you happy_. On its heals, he remembered her knowing smile when he had called James his partner. It joined the stain and mingled with Laura’s words— _someone so good-looking is the_ art _themselves_ —and knowing looks. He thought of how annoyed he’d been with her. The both of them.

 _Oh. Bugger it_ , he sighed. His head fell into his hands and he realized what a fool he’d been. He thought of how much he enjoyed all his assignments all the more when James was with him or when he was drawing James. 

Robbie felt as if his life had been set. A drawing made of crisp lines and angular shapes with a precise singular perspective in black and white, but in a moment a great hand had wiped across it, leaving a smeared, messy plethora of charcoal shapes. In a moment, everything was undone. In a moment, remnants of the certainty and clarity with which he used to see things became dirty smudges. In a moment, everything seemed charcoal. 

_Oh hell_. 

He groaned loudly at his own foolishness. They were only supposed to be bleeding art lessons. He remembered Sue’s words about art being dangerous and he knew she was right and hated her for it. More dangerous than a gun.

“Robbie, what is it,” James said suddenly, pulling himself up. Robbie felt his hands drift across his arms and into his own hands, pulling them from his face. “Are you hurt?”

“Nothing, lad,” Robbie said with a feeble smile. “Just the art.”

James looked at him like he didn’t quite believe him, but turned to look at the abandoned drawing holding it up. “It’s me. This is quite good. I mean, the model leaves _something_ to be desired,” he joked, “but the artist is excellent. I don’t know why you’re groaning.”

Robbie smiled at him weekly. “The model is superior to the artist’s skill if anything.”

“I wouldn’t say that. What's the matter? Do you not like it? You can always draw something else. _Someone_ else.” There was a lightness that felt a little forced.

Robbie’s stomach plummeted. “It’s nothing, really.”

James eyed him suspiciously, still holding the picture. “You look almost ill.”

Robbie turned to the river, but didn’t see an inch of it. How on earth were they supposed to work together now? What the hell was he supposed to say?

“I’m just thinking is all.”

“Must be some terrible thoughts.”

Robbie let out a hollow laugh. Everything was different, but nothing had changed. He only really had his own perspective—one point. He just had to let it go. And never draw again. And never take another bleeding art class ever.

When Robbie finally looked back James was staring at him intently. “Why won’t you tell me?”

“What?”

“Did you get a phone call or something?”

“No.”

“Is it because of the drawing?”

“Sort of. I don’t know.” 

“Because of me.” 

“What?” Robbie jolted. “No! I-I was just…”

“Just thinking,” James finished, nodding, clearly unsatisfied.

“Oi, leave it off,” Robbie snapped, suddenly furious with himself. “This is the happiest I’ve been in a while. Let’s leave off the melancholy and the art and just enjoy the sun.” He turned his face skyward, eyes closed, as he readily absorbed the warmth.

“What are you doing with this when you’re done?” James asked after a minute or so.

Robbie glanced over. The drawing. _The bloody drawing._ “No idea. Put it away, I suppose.” He couldn’t quite think past their picnic. His head was too full.

“Can I have this when you’re done?” James asked.

 _No, because I’m going to burn it_ , Robbie was sorely tempted to say.

“If you like. Though I can make you a nicer one,” he offered lightly.

“This one is plenty nice.”

“Aye, for my beginner’s lessons. There are better people in my class, you know. Proper artists. I should introduce you and maybe you can ask them.”

“I wouldn’t want that though,” James said. “I wouldn’t be able to sit for anyone else.”

Robbie blinked at him. He’d heard him right, but the twist in his voice—

“How do you mean?” his voice felt far away. His heart pounded in his ears.

“I… well, it would be different if it weren’t with you. It feels safe when you look at me. I trust the way you—I trust you when you look at me,” he said after a moment, his voice dropping.

It was so vulnerable a think to draw and to show people your art that Robbie hadn't even considered that it may be vulnerable for James to let himself be scrutinized and drawn. Especially for someone like James who was always so closed off. He needed to be comfortable being vulnerable with Robbie. Being seen. He needed to trust him.

Just like when Robbie was lost in drawing, his hands took a mind of their own and went where they pleased. This time they slipped lightly across James’s jaw, gently turning his face towards his.

James watched him, eyes wide and unlocked. Surprised, but not… unwanting. Robbie leaned forward, careful not to disturb the piles of pencils or the sketch pad, navigating the space between, a breath he needed to take—was there excitement there? As Robbie moved, James’s eyelashes fluttered and he met him in between. Their breath touched the other’s face before their lips caressed the other.

It was more of a flutter than a kiss. Light enough to feel the other’s warmth, the softness of their lips. They drew back to look at the other, as if to confirm that the other really felt the same and wanted the same. Two points of the same perspective. Robbie slipped his hand behind James’s head to pull him closer and James bent to meet him again with a new ardour. They kissed slowly and steadily, as James wove his arm around Robbie, urging him closer. Robbie stumbled forward, knocking into his pile of pencils.

“Oh, not the—”

“Here let me!”

They both moved to push the mess out of the way, before falling onto each other with renewed eagerness. Robbie had to laugh.

“What?” James mumbled into his lips.

“I think I’ve wanted to do that for a long time. Maybe since the museum…”

James smiled. “I think I’ve wanted you to do that since the museum.”

“Yeah?” Robbie said, grinning.

“Yeah,” James laughed.

He couldn’t believe Sue and Laura were right.

“I wasn’t sure if you did after the portrait," James said. "You wouldn’t look at me and you shooed me out so quickly.”

“I suppose I was scared of what I felt and didn’t want to admit it. I was scared you wouldn’t feel the same.”

“I do,” James scoffed, as if it were ridiculous that he would feel any other way.

“I s’pose… I suppose I needed time. It’s a big change and you know how set in my ways I am. I needed time to figure it out for myself.”

“To build up slowly?” James had a glimmer in his eyes.

Robbie laughed again. “I think I was too scared of something ending to realize that something wonderful was beginning.”

"I just thought it was all about the art, that that's what you really cared about."

It was Robbie's turn to shake his head. How silly they'd both been, scared of the other's thoughts and feelings. Scared of their own. And now...

James smiled, his fingers tracing Robbie’s jaw.

“Sue always said art was dangerous and I didn’t believe her.”

“We're lucky to get out alive,” James murmured, his eyes on Robbie’s lips.

“Mm…"

They stifled another laugh with a kiss, as the rest of the world drifted by them and the charcoal-stained pages of Robbie’s sketchbook fluttered open, forgotten in the breeze.

**Author's Note:**

> All of the titled art pieces are real pieces. 
> 
> I twisted a line from Ali Smith that initially goes: “Art makes nothing happen in a way that makes something happen.”
> 
> The title is from a poem by Eugenio Montale, "The Eel".


End file.
